Unsolicited comments from strangers - what’s your rudest/funniest one?

[maria199]

Bit of a funny one really but yesterday I was about to go for a walk near a nature area and I was putting my 4 month old in her pram. She had just been in the car for a little while so when I put her into the pram she started crying (don’t worry - she loves the pram and was fine as soon as we started walking!)

As I was putting her in a woman in her late 60’s/70’s walked past with an elderly man and she says to the man “oh a little crying baby! must be hungry!” She then asked me how old my baby was so I told her 4 months old and she says to me “she sounds hungry!” I said “no she’s just been fed (she had), she just doesn’t like being put down” (in a friendly way) and she says to me “oh you’ve spoilt her then!” and laughed. I was a bit taken aback because how can you spoil a 4 month old baby?? 😂

Anyway, she walked on and it wasn’t exactly a malicious comment but it did make me think why on earth do people always love to comment, especially to people they don’t know!!!

It just made me curious - what are the funniest/rudest/weirdest interactions people have had from strangers when out with their baby?

A few months I decided to visit my local farm shop/cafe. Just a quick pop-in to get some of their nice bread. It's like 10am on a Monday morning, so not busy.
There's 2 carparks, both equidistant from the front door, but one is more "landscaped" than the other. We're talking bay markings and a few shrubs. The other is plain gravel and you park where you like. I swung into the gravel carpark.

Followed an older man up the path to the front door. He turns and looks at me, "You know, that carpark is only intended to be over-flow. You should park in the other one."
I fixed him with an "... the fuck?" expression and went, "oh well?"

Both carparks were basically empty. Who cares?!

I subsequently checked... There's zero signage to differentiate between the two carparks...

Also, another weight related comment…. This one was wild as I was then a size 10-12c whilst travelling in Thailand so many locals came upto me and kept saying “you’re so fat, so so fat” but with the biggest smile as if they’ve said the nicest thing in the world. After travelling for a while, I learnt that they genuinely meant no offence and apparently being “fat” is a sign of wealth and they did mean it as a compliment. Was still awkward the first time I got called fat 😂

A bloody stupid comment to make to a hospital visitor who could be sad, shocked or worried.

This happened to a friend of mines DD on a shopping trip. She was only about 18 spending her Christmas money. The staff directed her to the sale rail. They claimed it was because they were trying to clear all the old stock.

I was in a pub with my two beautiful, scrumptious toddler boys (it was raining outside and we had a 25 minute wait for the bus, so we were in a slightly grimy pub I wouldn’t normally have taken them in). There was a woman propping up the bar, loudly, obnoxiously drunk and swaying, who actually burst into tears at the sight of us. Eventually she blew her nose and managed to choke out:

“I just feel so sorry for you, that you had two boys and didn’t get a girl. You have no idea what you are missing.”

Weird as fuck.

Someone once congratulated my dad on ‘getting a nice bit on the side’ when we were out having a meal. I was 18 and my dad was 45. Not sure which of us was more insulted by my I remember saying ‘that’s my daughter, don’t look at her’ 🤢

Have had the opposite of a lot of you here. Had a few comments along the lines of ‘oh doesn’t LO look like you/has your colouring/takes after you’ etc - LO is adopted so I just smile and nod.

Had 2 horrible comments in the space of about 30 mins when LO had an eczema outbreak. Both approaching to tell me it looked awful, we shouldn’t be out, should take him to a dr etc. one said it was because LO was left to be dirty, the other that I gave too many sweets.

Im not proud but after politely batting the first one away, the second one got a very sharp “just go away, no one asked you anything” and a hard stare until they backed away mumbling about trying to help.

😂

Yet that wanker will never do anything in his life as amazing as birthing a baby...

🤗

But she was an old bat. A nasty old bat in fact.

During DS’s two year check up he was snacking on a small bowl of blueberries and the health visitor said “Blueberries? Gosh, you really are so middle class”.

er… ok!

Top 3:

A lady looked at our brown eyed baby and pointed out that my husband and I could not possibly have a brown eyed baby together as we have blue eyes. That was nice.

I worked check in for an airline while I was in Uni. Was very very slim at the time. A passenger told me she was a weight loss consultant and handed me her business card…

Cashier looked at my young baby who was in the baby Björn, then looked at me, and asked if I was the mother because I was dark skinned and the baby was not (I was just tanned). He then said not to worry, the baby would go darker with time. So jarring to be told you don’t look related to your own child

This lamp story is mega boring now. 🤪

When I lived in a part of London that has a big Turkish population, I went for a walk-in hair trim and the Turkish hairdresser immediately asked me if I was Kurdish and informed me that in her particular part of Turkey there's an ethnic group of Kurdish people 'who are like, freaky pale and have green eyes'.

I am indeed 'freaky pale' and I do have green eyes but I'm not Kurdish. When I explained this she said 'What, you are just English then?' in a very sceptical tone.

Is this a thing in Turkey?! Randomly quizzing people on their ethnicity based on their looks?

A drunk man once sang Elvis songs to me on the bus all the way from Putney to South Kensington. I ignored him and put my sunglasses on. He randomly announced to the bus: “She must be French”.

I think of him occasionally when I hear a snatch of Love Me Tender.

Not me but when my DD took DS to the park a boy (about 7ish) said to her my dad said you're a slapper because you have a baby.
DD considered correcting him but thought it was funnier not to. DD was 14 and DS was 2.
Similar situation I was told I shouldn't let my DDs stepfather hug her because it was inappropriate (?). The woman was very put out when I said he was her father.

Made me think of a recent party, where a somewhat drunk man kept insisting my husband is Jewish beyond any doubt, it’s obvious, and if I don’t know it then my husband has been keeping it a secret from me. What??? He is not, by the way.

Quentin.. Grayson? 🤣

Pushing my two children in their double pram up this week a woman said to me "oh, there's two of them. That was a fast production", then walked off chuckling to herself.

DH and I were visiting a small, touristy town we sometimes go to. We were crossing the road behind a very ordinary-looking, apparently white man in his 40s. I said to DH 'The road's a lot busier today than last time we were here'. The man ahead of me turned round and said aggressively: 'Did you just call me a [racial slur]?'

I was baffled, and just said 'No, I was saying to my husband that the road is busy today'. The man repeated 'You called me a ---' I said, 'No, I was talking to my husband about the road.' He finally said 'Fuck off, I hate racists' and disappeared into a nearby pub.

I was quite shaken by this, it was a couple of years ago and we haven't been back there since because of it. I spent weeks afterwards replaying my initial remark in my head, trying to work out if it could possibly have been misheard to be what the man said, or any kind of insult, but I couldn't fit the sounds to anything offensive.

If he'd been looking to pick an argument, it seemed strange that he would accuse me of using a racial slur when we were both (apparently) of the same race, unless he had been expecting me to say 'But you're white' thus laying the ground for an argument about his racial origin, in which case he'd picked the wrong person because I'd simply never use the word he used to anyone, in any circumstances, so that 'line of defence' didn't occur to me.

DH and I are not really prime targets for someone looking for a fight, in our 50s and 60s and both pretty weedy-looking; this man was quite well-built - the whole thing continues to puzzle me and play on my mind whenever it comes back to me.

17 in a pub, waiting at the bar. A man standing next to me looked me up and down and said 'I didn't know you could be ginger and gorgeous". Sadly I wouldn't have said boo to a goose back then so I just mumbled something and walked away. Love my hair now but it took a while!

I was walking to work one day in the rain. It was a 3 mile walk and I was wearing flat, smart, knee high boots. A man stopped me in the street to tell me I would look better in heels. I have never forgotten the entitlement of a man who felt a stranger should be considering his viewing pleasure over her own comfort.

When I was at uni, I expressed an overtly feminist interpretation of a text from that week's reading list. In response, one of the blokes in the seminar said, 'You want to be careful, saying stuff like that. People'll think you're a lesbian.' As if in his pea brain that was an insult. Twat.

I was walking my DS in a stroller, he was about 18mths old and tall for his age, we were waiting at the traffic lights when a man in his 20s smiled down at my toddler and then at me and said, with a grin:

"Oh, he's a big c*nt, aye?"

Then the light changed, and he was gone. I didn't say anything.

Going to a wedding in early 20's. A not even too snootish shop was my last resort for the dress. I walk into the shop and starts looking at the size 10 rail and the helpful wagon behind the counter helpfully told me bigger sizes were on the other wall. Only I was desperate I would have walked out but I had to buy something so I did in fact buy a dress and in a size 8 having tried them both on but the rudeness never left me.

Whilst pregnant, I worked with an Eastern European woman who said, “In my country, we believe if a woman is carrying a boy, she becomes more beautiful, if it’s a girl, she loses her looks because the daughter is taking away the mother’s beauty - I think you’re having a girl!” She was correct in her guess, but that didn’t do a lot for my confidence.

At the time (late 80s) I was alsonot yet married to my daughter’s father. My line manager took me aside one day and told me there were two different types of women; respectable women and whores, and he knew which type I was! I was so completely sideswiped and shocked I couldn’t respond.

To this day I don’t know why I didn’t report him and make a huge issue out of this appalling behaviour. Ironically, my soon to be husband was a senior manger in the same organisation and could have disciplined this man severely, but for some dumb reason I kept it quiet at the time. There was some poetic justice because Mr Righteous’s wife left him for some else not so long afterwards!